


White Queen, Black King

by sadgaymermaids



Series: (Soul/Check)mates [1]
Category: The Queen's Gambit (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, And literally everyone saw this coming, Benny isn't even in the first chapter, Beth's an idiot sometimes, Borgov spits straight wisdom, Canon Compliant, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, This is making it seem like they get together in the first chapter, To be fair so is Benny, they don't
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-25
Updated: 2021-01-31
Packaged: 2021-03-17 04:47:40
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 22,081
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28968549
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sadgaymermaids/pseuds/sadgaymermaids
Summary: Beth has had her inevitable love of chess stamped on her chest for as long as she could remember. The only problem is trying to find the person it matches. Her black king.(A soulmate au where everyone shares a mark with their soulmate.)
Relationships: Beth Harmon & Alma Wheatley, Beth Harmon & Benny Watts, Beth Harmon & Jolene, Beth Harmon & William Shaibel, Beth Harmon/Benny Watts, Vasily Borgov & Beth Harmon
Series: (Soul/Check)mates [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2124756
Comments: 65
Kudos: 205
Collections: Beth and Benny (The Queen's Gambit)





	1. Openings

In Beth’s oldest memory she is sitting at a wooden table across from her mother. She has her shirt off, though she can’t remember why, and is stroking the tattoo on her sternum. She doesn’t yet understand the meaning of it. To her it just looks like two ornately carved pieces of wood, one white, one black, they look mostly similar but the black one has a little cross on the top. She thinks they look pretty, even if she doesn’t know what they are.

“Mom?” She asks looking up at her mother who hums in response, she’s focused on her embroidering. “What does the tattoo mean?”

“Nothing for you to worry about.”

“But-”

“It’s not important Beth. Now, why don’t you go get me some nice pink thread.” There’s an edge in her mother’s voice that tells Beth not to push the issue. Instead, she gets up and scurries off to get her mother more thread. 

The memory ends there. It’s one of the few she has of her mother. She is young and doesn’t understand what’s happening but they are living in a trailer in Kentucky and her mother is ripping things off the wall and throwing them into a bonfire. In another memory she is arguing with a man at the door, the man looks back at Beth standing in the window when he leaves. She doesn’t know who this man is but feels the crushing weight of disappointment and worthlessness when she thinks of him.

In the final memory Beth has of her mother they are driving down the road and she is told to close her eyes. Later on, she will wonder if her mother followed her own advice or if she faced her death with her eyes open. But for now, she has other things to worry about.

The woman that drives her to the orphanage keeps talking like maybe if she says enough Beth will want to talk to her. She doesn’t. She just wants people to stop talking to her. It feels like people haven’t stopped talking and asking questions since the crash. Maybe the woman doesn’t like the silence the way Beth hates the questions.

The car stops in front of a large, angry-looking brick building. There are three more adults waiting on the steps for her. The woman wishes Beth good luck as she gets out of the car. One of the women steps forward and takes Beth by the hand. She is introduced to the other two staff members that smile at her. She doesn’t smile back.

She is given a full tour of the building, shown the chapel and classroom and her bed. Then they go to a room full of plain brown dresses. She is told to take off her dress, the one with her name embroidered over the breast. 

“That’s a pretty soulmark dear.” The woman glances up from where she is looking through the rack of brown dresses. 

“A what?” Beth asks. She has never heard that word before.

“A soulmark, it matches with your soulmate.” Seeing Beth's blank look she continues. The person God has made just for you, the person put on earth to be your other half.”

“And they will have the same tattoo?” 

“Yes, you will know it’s them because they will have the same tattoo in the same place.” She lets the conversation rest after that, pulls out a dress for Beth to try on but Beth’s mind is racing. 

She keeps turning the idea over in her mind as she is dressed in new clothes and her hair is cut. It only stops when she dropped at the end of a line of the other girls by herself with a promise of seeing her at dinner. The girl standing in front of her turns and starts a conversation. She explains that Beth should keep the green pills to take at bedtime. 

But when her turn comes Beth does not listen to the advice and swallows both. She feels the pills kick in and stumbles into a wall. She stands there watching the janitor mop the floor for an undetermined amount of time, listening to the way his keys clack together. She manages to pull herself together enough to get to the dining room in time for dinner. 

She sits down across from the girl from before, Jolene, she thinks her name is, but her brain feels fuzzy and heavy at the moment. Jolene laughs at her and says that she should take the green pills at bedtime. Beth picks at the strange-looking food, it’s gummy and doesn’t taste right but she eats all of it. 

That night she lies wide awake in bed. She’s trying not to think about her mother or a blue truck careening towards them or the sound of metal scraping together. Instead, she watches the shadows on the ceiling of the trees blowing in the wind outside and listens to the quiet breathing of the rest of the girls around her. 

Beth adjusts quickly to life at Methuen. She is used to keeping her mouth shut and following orders. She learns the routine and how to follow it, where she can bend the rules. She becomes friends with Jolene who has the bed next to her. She saves the green pills in the cup with her toothbrush. She will save them up sometimes, take two or three at a time. She likes the way they make her feel, the way they make her brain fuzzy. 

She’s been at the orphanage for a couple of months when she is asked to clean the erasers. She goes down to the basement, passing Jolene being dragged out of class. The basement is dark and cramped, the walls a dull grey concrete. She bangs the erasers together as she looks around. 

That’s when she sees it. The checkered board, black and white pieces scattered across it in combinations she doesn’t yet understand. She sees a black piece that’s tall with a little cross on the top and a white piece that looks similar, without the cross. They don’t look exactly like the ones on her chest but very similar. She turns and runs from the room, scared of what it all might mean. She goes back to math class but her mind is still on the carved pieces of wood that seemed to pierce her very soul. 

It’s the reason she asks Jolene about it at dinner that evening.

“Jolene?”

“Yes.”

“What do you know about soulmarks?”

“Shit, well what do you know already?”

“You have a matching mark with someone that god made for you or something.”

“Yeah that’s true, well I don’t know about all that god stuff but don’t tell Ms. Deardorff. You have a matching tattoo with your soulmate. Some say the closer it is to your heart the stronger the connection. It’s usually of something important to your relationship. And people don’t like to go around showing it if they can help it.”

“But how do you know if someone you meet is your soulmate if you can’t see their mark?”

“I don’t know, I suppose you just know. That’s what I’ve heard in books at least but it might all be bullshit.”

Beth eats the rest of her dinner in silence turning over Jolene’s words in her head, adding them to the things she already knew about soulmates. She thinks of her mother telling her she needed to learn to be alone in the world, to be strong on her own. She resolves to herself that she will not let this elusive soulmate scare her, she will learn about this game that the janitor plays in the basement. 

That night when she is lying in bed, the vitamins making her brain feel fuzzy she imagines the checkerboard on her ceiling, the shadows bending until they form the two-toned squares. Then the pieces solidify, she doesn’t understand what they mean yet but she thinks they are beautiful. She doesn’t realize the absentminded way she’s been stroking her chest, right over her soulmark.

It takes Beth three weeks before she gets the confidence to ask about the game, five trips to the basement. She watches how the old man moves the pieces, begins to understand how they work. She’s enraptured by it, there’s an entire world contained in those 64 squares. 

She eventually approaches Mr. Shaibel, one afternoon when she’s supposed to be in the chapel.

“What that game called?” she asks, standing in the corner of his space, openly watching the game now. 

He tells her she should be with the others upstairs, but she doesn’t want to be with the others. She wants to know what this game, the pieces of which are forever branded on her chest is called.

“It’s called chess.” She rolls the word around in her mind, chess.

“Will you teach me?”

“I don’t play strangers.”

He says it with finality, Beth knows she cannot convince him today. She has gotten a name today and for now, that will be enough. She turns and leaves, slipping back into the chapel with the others, Ms. Lonsdale none the wiser.

It takes another few days before she returns to the basement. Mr. Shaibel is just finishing a game as she comes down. She watches as rearranges the pieces to their starting places and steps forward making her case. He argues back but she pushes on showing what she already knows from watching him play. And he acquiesces, letting her play a game.

It takes a few weeks for him to explain all the rules to her. Each night she takes her pills and goes over their previous games on the ceiling, incorporating the new rules she has learnt, figuring out how she lost. She thinks she’s starting to understand how it all works, how to properly protect her king and defend and attack.

Mr. Shaibel is a frustratingly slow teacher. He doesn’t explain things when she asks, shuts her down if she pushes. It forces her to figure it out for herself. She goes over the games until she learns her weaknesses. She learns how the game works and starts playing her own games in her head, playing against herself.

One day after he forces her to resign for reasons she doesn’t understand she calls him a cocksucker. She doesn’t understand what it means but she’s heard Jolene say it and knows it’s an insult. His back straightens from where he was doing something at the small counter along the wall. When he turns to her his expression is hard.

“Get out.”

She scrambles out of her chair and back upstairs, all the way up to her bed. She sits and waits until all the girls come back from their lessons. She talks to Jolene and they go to dinner and she forces thoughts of pawns and queens from her head for one night. 

The next day when she tries the door to the basement it’s locked. She has a sinking feeling in her stomach as she jiggles the handle, the same feeling she has when she thinks of the memory of the man outside the trailer. She feels like crying but doesn’t let herself. 

Instead, she goes outside to clean the erasers, watching the teenage boys across the street smoking. That night she plays over games in her head, more diligent than ever. Finding her weaknesses and his. This continues for a week, she watches the boy across the way until he has a girl pressed up against an old green truck in the driveway. The next day she finds the basement door open. 

That is the first day she wins. She’s proud of herself, she’s done it for once. Mr. Shaibel huffs and chastises her like always. He tells her something about the Sicilian Defence. Tells her the squares have names if you’re good enough. She wants desperately to be good enough, to learn the names, to learn everything. 

He beats him three more times before he caves. He hands her a book, Modern Chess Openings, and then he finally teaches her the names of the squares. She thinks that she is finally good enough. He tells her she is astounding.

They continue like that for a couple of weeks, she continues beating him faster and faster. She reads the book and learns the strategy. Some of it she already knows, Mr. Shaibel had taught her some of them. It goes over everything with such detail though, plots out famous old games. She plays through them on her ceiling at night. 

And then one day she comes downstairs and there is another man there with Mr. Shaibel. He introduces himself as a teacher from the local high school. He asks her to play a game. She beats him, explaining mate in three at the end. He gives her a doll then, she looks to Mr. Shaibel who nods towards the man, so she puts on her best smile and thanks him then asks for another game. Eventually, she plays both him and Mr. Shaibel at the same time. She beats them both, wandering off picturing the board in her head as she calls out her final moves. Before he leaves he takes a picture of her and Mr. Shaibel, both of them awkward and unsmiling.

A few days later when she steps up in line to get her vitamins she only gets a brown one. The little paper cup she is handed only has a brown pill. She looks up at Mr. Fergussen and asks about it but he only shoos her off. She walks away feeling panic curl in her stomach, she doesn’t know how many pills she has saved up in the cup with her toothbrush but not enough. She needs them, why can’t they see that?

Jolene tells her she’s having withdrawal symptoms. She doesn’t know what that means but can feel the pounding headache that doesn’t go away and her cold sweaty hands. She closes her eyes as she takes her last pill. Feels the headache fade as she imagines a chessboard on the ceiling. 

Mr. Ganz comes back. This time he sits in Ms. Deardorff’s office and explains how he wants her to come and play the highschool chess club. After some back and forth Ms. Deardorff says yes and sets up for her to be picked up a few days later. 

Later Jolene asks her what she’s going to do now, without the pills. She tells her she will stay up reading, playing games over in her head. And that’s what she does. Fighting back the headaches and wrapped in her blanket to stop the chills she memorizes the book she was given. 

The day she is supposed to play the high school team she feels like shit as Jolene would say. She is following the teacher and older girl out of the orphanage. The girl keeps asking her questions she doesn’t have the answers to so she just says no. They are stopped by Jolene by the door. She wishes Beth luck and presses something into her hand. When she looks she sees two little green pills and smiles gratefully at her friend.

She beats the entire team with little effort. Their eyes go from smug to panicked to angry to resigned as she quickly and efficiently destroys them. She explains her wins to Mr. Shaibel when she gets back, eating from a box of chocolates Mr. Ganz had given to her when he drove her back. Mr. Shaibel quietly listens and tells her when she should be getting back upstairs. 

Her high from winning doesn’t last very long. Before she knows it her head is pounding again and she desperately wants another green pill. She sees where they’re being kept, in a large glass jar behind the counter. She goes to Jolene, desperate, she understands in the back of her mind she’s being rude but she doesn’t care. 

It’s a couple of days later, they are watching a movie, everyone in the house in the same room. She leaves, asking to go to the bathroom and instead turns towards the other end of the hallway to where they line up each day. The unscrews the screw from the window as quietly as possible before carefully lifting it and slipping inside. She manages to get to the large glass jar of green pills. She stuffs handfuls into her mouth, fills her pockets, swallows as many as she can. She is just climbing back out the window, dragging the large jar with her. She doesn’t know where she’ll put it but her brain is too fuzzy at the moment to worry about that. She hears Ms. Deardorff yelling at her distantly, the blurry outline of everyone standing in front of her. She sways on her feet, feels the glass slip from between her hands. She follows after it, collapsing to the ground, letting the fuzzy darkness take over her conscience.

Beth gets punished for her little excursion. She is no longer allowed to play chess with Mr. Shaibel in the basement. She is constantly being watched, only allowed to go to her classes and meals. She has to go to the infirmary every day for the first month, to check on her. She spends her nights reading and playing through the games in her head.

After a few months, the restrictions on Beth relax and she settles into her life. She passes years like this, days blurring into each other. She plays chess at least once a week with Mr. Shaibel, sometimes when it’s nice they go outside. People know not to bother them for those few hours a week. She starts consistently beating him, can see the glimmer of pride in his eye when she pins him in only a few minutes.

Beth watches as people come and go from the orphanage, the little blonde-haired girls with the pretty smiles that get adopted. She and Jolene share cigarettes and watch people come to collect their perfect new daughters. Every time it happens Beth stays up extra late reading, playing over games, resolves herself to be better. Maybe no one can love her but in the 64 squares of a chessboard she is safe, she has control.

One night Beth and Jolene show each other their soulmarks. They are sitting in the empty bathroom, leaning against opposite walls. It has become their place over the years, a place to talk in private. Jolene pushes her hair up and pulls her collar down to show a little yellow notepad with My dearest Jo written in elegant cursive. 

“I looked it up, it’s called a legal pad. They’re used by fancy business people. Maybe that means my soulmate is some rich white boy.” Jolene says, she sounds self-assured, almost smug, but Beth can hear the note of worry. She supposes that everyone is at least a little scared about their soulmate. 

“Can I touch it?” Beth asks hesitantly, finger a couple inches above the skin.

“Go ahead.”

She’s not sure what she expects, she’s felt her own mark, it’s just normal skin. She brushes her fingers gently over the mark and feels Jolene shiver slightly under her grip. She takes back her hand and stands there, looking at the tiny picture on her friend’s skin. 

“I showed you mine, now get on with it Cracker.” Jolene breaks the tension.

Beth sighs and sits back so she’s facing Jolene. She shrugs off her cardigan and pulls her dress down until it’s bunched at her hips then unbuttons the first few buttons and pulls her shirt open to show her chest. 

“Well shit! Of course. Is everything in your life about chess?”

Beth just shrugs. Was she fated to chess because of her mark or does she have her mark because of her love for chess? 

“Can I touch it?” Jolene parrots her earlier words back to her, Beth just shrugs again.

With the same delicate soft hand that Beth had used Jolene reaches out and strokes the chess pieces on her chest. It feels wrong in some intangible way. Beth’s brain screaming Wrong at her, at the hand on her chest. She wrinkles her nose at the feeling but doesn’t move. 

Beth resigns herself to be a ‘lifer’ as Jolene calls them. She will eventually turn 18 and be dumped at the bus stop or the local university and be all alone. She knows no one adopts 15-year-old orphans who are only interested in chess and never smile. 

And then her life changes one day. A car pulls up and she watches as a couple get out, this is not new or particularly interesting. But she feels a pull in her gut as she watches them look up at the building and the woman catches her eye. 

She gets called into a meeting with them, this is not the first time, but the first in a while. She is late, deciding that she needed a shower. Before she goes in Mr. Fergussen gives her a hairband and she feels something, dangerously like hope, spark in her stomach.

She stands quietly at the back of the room as Ms. Deardorff talks about how she’s at the top of her classes. She says that Beth is 13 and Beth speaks up for the first time to correct her, but then everyone turns to her and she just agrees with the statement. Ms. Deardorff keeps talking and Beth feels like she’s a piece of meat for sale, not a child. Ms. Deardorff doesn’t mention chess.

She talks with the Wheatleys for a bit. They ask her questions and she puts on her best smile and answers them all politely. The woman seems nice like she could almost be a mother to Beth. The man seems disinterested in her, he just looks at her like he’s sizing up. 

Eventually, Beth is let out of the room and Ms. Deardorff comes back in. Beth sits waiting in the hallway. She knows what the answer will be, what the answer always is. She doesn’t let the hope coiling in the pit of her stomach grow. There’s no use for that. It’s like how she knows she will always beat Mr. Shaibel at chess. Even when he uses new moves and puts up a good fight she will always win. 

But chess is not real life and sometimes people surprise her. Ms. Deardorff comes out and tells her to go pack. She doesn’t leave that day, there are papers to sign and the couple had to get their house ready. She will be picked up in a few days.

She tells Mr. Shaibel at her next game with him. He smiles, the same proud glint in his eye he gets when she performs a particularly tricky chess move or learns a new opening. He doesn’t say he’ll miss her, she doesn’t say she’ll miss him, they just turn back to the game. 

That night she packs her books and things. She cannot find her book Modern Chess Openings. She tries to comfort Jolene, she will really miss her first friend. She knows Jolene will turn 18 soon, she doesn’t know where she’ll go but Beth hopes it’s to good places. The next morning Jolene hugs her and tells her to be a good kid and charm their rich white asses. She just smiles and hugs Jolene tighter. 

She is sitting waiting in the entranceway by herself, Jolene had class and had to go, when Mr. Sahibel approaches her. He stands awkwardly beside her for a moment before reaching into his pocket and pulling something out. He silently hands it over and she takes it. She sees it’s a white pawn from the chess set they played with, it’s now been put on a chain that she can loop over her neck. She looks back and Mr. Shaibel, he is smiling a small, sad smile that she realizes means he will miss her.

“Thank you.”

He just nods in his silent way. The two of them stay in the entryway until Ms. Deardorff comes and tells Beth her new parents are here to collect her. She takes a deep breath, gives one final look to Mr. Shaibel and goes to meet this new chapter of her life.

The ride to her new home is filled with uncomfortable silence. Mrs. Wheatley seems nice enough but Mr. Wheatley kept glaring at her in the rearview mirror. So she sits silently and watches the scenery pass outside the window. They drive to a small town a couple hours away then through the town and into the suburbs. They pull into the driveway of a large blue house. 

Mrs. Wheatley leads her through the house as Mr. Wheatley settles in the living room, still shooting glares at Beth as she passed. She is showed to a room on the second floor, it’s large and covered in pink but she doesn’t mind because it’s all hers and it’s not next to a bathroom used by two dozen girls. 

The next morning she is woken up by arguing out on the lawn. She goes to the window and sees Mr. Wheatley getting into the car while arguing with his wife. They argue about him leaving but ultimately he drives off into the morning. She hears piano being played from downstairs, an angry, sorrowful melody. She creeps down the stairs and sees Mrs. Wheatley sitting at the piano. She explains that Mr. Wheatley has left on a business trip, bitterness seeping into her tone. She tells Beth about playing the piano and how she gave up her dreams because of her stage fright. Then she mentions having once having a child and Beth realizes with a sinking feeling that she is just a replacement for their real kid they could never have. A last-ditch effort to save a failing marriage.

Beth sits in the back of the class for all of her classes at school. She keeps her head down and tries to ignore the way the other kids stare and whisper about her. She doesn’t need them, she doesn’t need anybody. Other than Jolene she’s never had any friends before. She just keeps her head down and thinks about her studies. At lunch, she asks someone about a chess club and is disappointed to find out there is none, only ‘social clubs’ with weird names. 

It’s a couple days later when Mr. Wheatley unexpectedly returns from his business trip, only for the night. Mrs. Wheatley spends the evening and subsequent morning flitting around the house attending to him. Beth spends it ignoring him as much as possible, he still shoots dirty looks at her and mutters under his breath when he thinks she can’t hear. 

Because of one of his comments, Mrs. Wheatley decides to take her shopping. They take the bus into town on the weekend. Beth follows Mrs. Wheatley through the store, running after her to catch up with her faster pace. She sees a pretty green dress that she likes and then gets sidetracked by the chess sets. She gets pulled away though and follows diligently as Mrs. Wheatley collects new dresses for her and even a coat from the bargain section. She still thinks about the chess sets though. Mrs. Wheatley says she’ll start giving her an allowance so she can save up for her own. She thinks of her games with Mr. Shailbel in the old basement, even out in the sun and the pawn on a chain under her shirt, right over the king and queen on her chest. 

It’s with a renowned interest she goes looking for anything related to chess. She asks for books at the library, catching Margaret making out with a boy among the shelves. When she gets home Mrs. Wheatley asks her to go get her cigarettes from the drug store. While there she sees Chess Review on the magazine rack. There’s a list of tournaments happening in the country and around the world. While the owner is distracted she steals a copy, hiding it in the newspaper. 

When she gets home she asks Mrs. Wheatley about money. There is a tournament coming up in town that has a $5 entry. She decides to write a letter to Mr. Shaibel for help, promising to pay him back double if she wins. When she is on her way to mail it, Mrs. Wheatley calls her to her room and asks her to fill her prescription.

When the pharmacist comes back with a bottle of little green pills that are so familiar to her Beth doesn’t think twice about pocketing half of them. She feels a little guilty when Mrs. Wheatley complains about bottles being half full. But she has a chess tournament to enter and win, she needs the pills. 

That night she rips the lace off her ceiling and imagines a chessboard on the ceiling for the first time in years.


	2. Middle game

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW there's canon-compliant alcoholism/addiction in this chapter, if that's triggering to anyone please don't read this. This chapter basically follows the rest of the show from where the last chapter left off to the end.

Mr. Shaibel sends her back an envelope with 5 dollar bills. She enters the chess competition and each night takes at least one pill and plays a game on the ceiling. She picks up more pills at the pharmacy and doesn’t give them to Mrs. Wheatley. She convinces herself she won’t use all of them, that when Mrs. Wheatley asks her for more she will just give her another half-filled bottle. It’s only for the upcoming competition, she needs them if she wants to win. And Beth desperately wants to win.

She steps into the high school across town and strides confidently up to the desk. She gets handed a piece of paper to fill out with her information as the man behind the table starts talking to her, barely looking up. He starts asking questions she doesn’t know the answers to and then asks if she really wants to do this. But she’s sure, she’s here and she’s going to win. His brother, they look the same, she assumes they are twins, gets involved when they offer to put her in beginners but she remains steadfast. She wants to win the big money, she knows she can. She leaves no room for them to argue though they try.

She steps into the gymnasium and sees tables set up with chess boards. And milling all around, men. Grown men, lots of them. Some seem to be studying the boards, others sitting on the sidelines, watching the competition, some seem to know each other and are talking with their friends. She feels small compared to all of them, they obviously know what they’re doing, they’re grown, adult, men and she’s just some orphan girl. But then she remembers Mr. Shaibel calling her astounding and the queen and king on her chest and how comfortable she feels on the chessboard. She squares her shoulders and finds the board with the pairing for the games on it.

Her name is just being added as she approaches. She finds it at the bottom of the list, the last table. She looks up at the man standing next to her and is shocked. He is beautiful, strong features, dark curly hair. She stares for a second before getting the courage to ask him a question. He starts to answer then turns and falters. The sight of a scrawny 15-year-old girl probably not what he was expecting. He wishes her luck as she walks off. She doesn’t need luck, she needs to win. But she says it back all the same. She finds her table and sits down, watching the man go and meet his opponent. She shakes her head, now is not the time, she has a match to win.

Beth has been paired with the only other girl in the place. She introduces herself, Annette Packer, Beth thinks she’s nice. She explains how chess clocks work and touch move and how they’re not supposed to put the girls together but they do anyway. She seems to like Beth despite her quick defeat.

Beth sees the pretty man again as she hands in her sheet to the front table. He looks impressed when he passes and smiles at her; she smiles back feeling butterflies in her stomach. Maybe this is what Jolene meant when she talked about love. She pushed those silly ideas out of her head as quickly as they come. She didn’t even know the man’s name.

She wanders around the hall, watching the other games that are going long. She imagines what moves she would make if she were playing. There’s a sectioned off part where the top boards are that she walks behind. There’s a crowd formed around one table and, curious, she joins them. She finds a space next to the pretty man from before. She asks him questions and he whispers the answers to her before one of the players, Beltik, turns and glares at her. She rolls her eyes slightly but shuts up. Their game is more interesting than the ones in the main room but she can still see weaknesses in their play. Beltik is offered a draw but doesn’t take it, instead moves his rook. His opponent looks at the board for a second before tipping his king. 

Beth goes through the rest of her day beating men twice her age in sweater vests. Some get angry at her, others accept their defeat gracefully. Some try to offer a draw when they feel her closing in but she doesn’t accept. Some put up a decent fight but she quickly puts them in place, tying up their pieces into nice little bows. 

She takes the bus back across town and gets home to find Mrs. Wheatley in front of the tv with all the lights off. She gets her food from the oven and eats at the kitchen table listening to the sounds from the tv in the other room. She plays back through her games of the day in bed that night.

The next day she plays more games, wins, though they get more challenging. She argues with the twins, they know her name now. She desperately wants to play Beltik, wants to beat him. He’s too smug, self-assured in his ability. Beth can see holes in his game from a mile away.

She walks determinedly back into the gym only to be stopped short when she sees the pretty man from before. He smirks at her, though she can see a hint of surprise dancing in the amusement in his eyes. She steals herself for the game before her, if she wants to play Beltik she’s going to have to beat him. 

Halfway through the game the man, Townes, pushes his sleeves up revealing a tattoo on his forearm of a camera. She can feel rising disappointment that this man doesn’t have a matching mark but she forces herself to look away and focus on the game. She wins in a few more moves and for once he doesn’t look amused anymore just impressed. She doesn’t have a chance to relish in it long though. She feels this stabbing pain in her abdomen suddenly, so when he asks if she wants to drop off her sheet with him she makes up some excuse about studying the board.

She rushes to the bathroom, runs the water cold, splashes some onto the back of her neck, she feels kind of nauseous suddenly. She lifts up her skirt to find blood dripping down her leg and it suddenly all makes sense. She’s heard about periods, had grown up surrounded by other girls of varying ages, she had just never actually experienced it for herself. 

Her saviour comes in the form of Annette Packer who rambles on about how she throws up during hers. She gives Beth a small cardboard box that she quickly realizes she has no idea what to do with, for all of the girls living at Methuen they were never taught how to use one. She bunches up some toilet paper and shoves it into her underwear hoping it’ll hold enough until she gets home. Maybe she can ask Mrs. Wheatley for help. Before she leaves the bathroom the other girl stops her.

“Beat him, will you.” And Beth can see the earnestness in her eyes, none of the smug amusement that Townes had, just someone who believed in her wholeheartedly. 

“I’ll try.” She promises with a small grin.

Her final game of the day is against Sizemore, her stomach still hurts and she can feel a headache building that’s not helped by the whispers that now seem to follow her. Sizemore is a decent player but the game takes longer than it needs to because she keeps getting distracted by the way he combs his hair. She wants to reach across the table and snatch the comb from his hands and snap it in two. Instead, she destroys him on the board.

When she gets home Mrs. Wheatley is playing the piano again, beer cans scattered near her. Beth knows something is wrong but doesn’t know how to ask so she tells her she started menstruating. Mrs. Wheatley tells her to take what she wants from her chiffonier and asks her to get the little green pills. When she gets upstairs the usually perfectly tidy room is a mess, the bed is unmade with the phone lying off its cradle on it next to the bottle of pills. Beth replaces the phone and gets what she needs then carefully makes her way back downstairs. 

When she gets downstairs she has to ask, it’s a pointless question obviously something is wrong. Mrs. Whetley rambles on about Aristotle, she seems almost manic but her eyes are dull and tired. Beth feels like a stone had rooted itself in her stomach and it’s pulling her down as she asks the dreaded question. She doesn’t want to go back, Jolene would be gone by now and she would be all alone and she wouldn’t be able to compete in chess tournaments anymore. 

Mrs. Wheatley tells her they can lie about it then shows her how to put on a pad. Then they make the chicken dinners from the freezer and sit together at the dinner table. They don’t talk throughout dinner but Beth feels that same feeling of hope she felt when she was told she was being adopted. 

Beth makes it to the finals against Beltik. She sits watching his clock rundown it’s time and glares at his empty seat. She has waited all weekend for this and she will nor be psyched out by some college boy who thinks she’s not worth his time. Beth knows more than him about waiting, she can watch his clock rundown it’s entire 90 minutes if she has to. 

Finally, he arrives looking unbothered as he clutches a cup of coffee and Beth gets annoyed. He had the gall to come in and disrespect her, she wants to destroy him now. He makes his first move and gives her an easy smile. They continue like that for the first few minutes, her stewing in her mounting anger as he yawns, at the game, at her, she’s not sure. His teeth are all crooked and for some reason that infuriates her more. Despite her best efforts, she is flustered. 

She can’t take it anymore, she grabs her purse and runs to the bathroom. She takes the little green pills from her bag. She needs to get out of her own head for a moment, focus on the game. She swallows the pills and stands for a second before the board appears on the bathroom ceiling. She runs through all the possible combinations for their game quickly. She fixes her skirt, brushes invisible dust from her sweater and walks back out. She is ready now, knows how to beat Beltik. When he scrambles for a way out of the hole she’s dug him into she just sighs and backs him even further into the corner. And then she’s done it, he finally saw what’s happening and tips his king.

It’s a couple days later that Alma excitedly reads off the story about her in the paper. Beth asks her to open a bank account with the money she has just won. Then she goes and buys all the chess books she can find and the pretty dress she saw before and her very own chess set. 

Alma starts talking about other chess tournaments, calculating all the costs in her notebook, figuring out where they would stay if they were to go. The first one they actually go to is in Cincinnati. They stay at a hotel Alma calls pleasant after giving it a proper inspection. She feels the gaze of the men in the lobby as she walks through to the sign-in table. She’s the prodigy, the girl. 

She is exploring the hotel more when she sees him. He sits next to the stairs so she can watch him as she climbs. He’s surrounded by fans that hang on to his every word like he is the chess messiah. He sits there in his long black leather coat and cowboy hat with a knife strapped to his hip. She thinks he looks a bit ridiculous, but she can’t help but be drawn in by the showmanship of it all, he’s supposed to the best isn’t he. And he picks through her suggestion and she wants to retaliate, wants to sit down across from Benny Watts and play him properly. But then a man answers his question and she realizes she is not alone, he is putting on a show for more interesting people than her. There’s something in the way he speaks to her though, the hand he lays on her shoulder as he walks off that draws her in. He’s magnetic, she supposes that’s how he won the American title. 

She spends the rest of the weekend winning. Some men pale when they see her name next to theirs on the list, groan when she sits down at the table across from them. Others smile cockily at her, make suggestive comments as she sits down. She is not sure who’s more fun to beat.

She sees the twins again and spends her evening with Alma, watching her sip her cocktails. She replays through her games of the day on an actual board. She pushes all thoughts of Benny Watts and his ridiculous hat out of her head. She doesn’t think about how he knew who she was or how he looked almost boyish when she caught his eye from either side of the stairs when he looked at her from under the brim of his hat. Instead, she focuses on her next game, how to improve her middle game, where her defence is shaky. In the end, she wins it all like she knew she would, Alma even comes to some of her games.

And so it begins. They start travelling farther and farther for tournaments. Beth wins every time, some closer than she would care to admit. They start talking about her in newspapers, a reporter comes to her home. She makes some connection between Beth’s dead parents and the chess pieces that Beth refutes then calls Beth crazy. She isn’t sure she likes reporters anymore. 

Suddenly though, for the first time in her life, Beth Harmon is popular. People stop her in the halls and ask for autographs, she even gets invited to an Apple Pi meeting. They ask about the boys and she sees a flash of a cowboy hat, she chooses not to think too hard about that. She brushes off the questions and they laugh in their high pitched way about trading rooks as if they understand what that means. They ask about her soulmark and she has to stop herself from rubbing at her sternum. Eventually, they get distracted by a song and she makes her escape. It seems no matter how famous Beth becomes she will never fit in with the Apple Pis and their strange world.

She goes to the US Open in Las Vegas, it’s filled with all the glamour that she expects it to be. She sees Townes again, he is a reporter now. He invites her to his room and something flutters in her stomach, just because he's not her soulmate doesn’t mean she can’t like him. And then a man walks into the room and it’s apparent he’s staying there, he’s wearing skimpy shorts and she notices the camera on his wrist, the one she knows matches Townes'. Townes, with his amused smirk every time he sees her and gentle hands as he tells her how to move for the shot and his hair that swoops in perfect curls. Beth doesn’t like journalists but she thinks she can make an exception for him. When she gets back to her room Alma lets her try beer, she chugs the whole thing, reveling how it burns on the way down. Her head feels fuzzy like when she takes the green pills, there’s a warmth with it though that spreads through her body making her relax.

She spends her weekend wandering the hotel between games, she breezes through most of them. That’s not who she’s here to play. She has to make it to the finals, granted so does he, but he’s the American champion it shouldn’t be difficult. She watches people as they circle Benny Watts, he always has a crowd around him like the first time she saw him. He approaches her one day, introducing himself. She feels a weird sense of disappointment that he doesn’t remember meeting her before. Though why would he remember the sacred 15-year-old she had been? He tells her about how he found a flaw in her game against Beltik, tells her to “set it up and play it out,” gives her a crooked little smile when she tells him she doesn’t want to. 

But she does and she finds the mistake she made, the one he found by just reading a stupid article in Life Magazine. Alma tries to reassure her, says not to dwell on the past. That night she falls asleep with her hand pressed to her chest, over her soulmark, trying to reassure herself that she is good enough no matter what mistakes Benny Watts might have found in her games. 

In the end though it seems to not be enough. He destroys her, the way she does everyone else. And then she runs away, like the coward she is, unable to face her own inadequacy. She thinks about Benny’s face in those last moments. The soft way he said “tough game” when she finally stuck out her hand. The surprisingly earnest look on his face as opposed to the usual condescending, amused smirk she was expecting, the one she gets from everyone else. He seemed genuine and that just made her want to cry more. Instead, she rants about the “stupid fucking pirate” to Alma in the privacy of their room. She’s angry at herself. She let him get under her skin, couldn’t see what he was doing right in front of her on the board.

She starts taking Russian classes at the local college, if she wants to play the best she’s going to have to go to them. After class, a college boy asks her to hang out. They go back to his place, get stoned with his roommates. She calls Alma and tells her she’ll be home late, to not wait up. She lies underneath him as he tries to fuck her, reminds herself she wanted this, wants this. After a few too many minutes of trying they roll over to opposite sides of the bed and sleep. 

When she wakes up in the morning she finds the house empty. She smokes the joint they left her and cleans up then she finds all the alcohol still left in the house and drinks, wine and liquor and beer. She drinks until she forgets all her worries, about her upcoming history test and chess tournament or how Alma seems to be getting sicker. She drinks until all the screaming thoughts in her head go quiet. She drinks until she forgets her own name. 

Then she strips down in front of a mirror and looks at her soulmark, really studies it in a way she hasn’t done since she was little. She traces her finger over the queen’s crown and the king’s base. She thinks of all the chess pieces she has seen over the years but her alcohol hazy mind can’t find one that matches with the ones on her chest. She supposes if she had found her soulmate she would know somehow, wasn’t that what Jolene had said.

She graduates from high school not that she had ever been particularly invested in it. Alma gets her a watch as a gift and Beth tells her she’s been invited to Paris. Then she studies. She studies for Mexico City, where she will face the Russian, Borgov himself. She doesn’t want to admit it but he scares her. If she couldn’t even beat Beny Watts how could she ever beat him.

On the plane to Mexico City Alma is practically giddy. She explains her penpal Manuel is going to pick them up at the airport. Beth wonders for the first time about Alma’s soulmark, she doesn’t ask though. Doesn’t want to impede on the happiness she seems to radiate. She thinks back to those first few weeks after Alston left, how she barely got out of bed. 

Manuel seems kind of sleazy but Alma seems happy so she keeps her mouth shut. The two of them go out every night, for most of the days as well. They try to drag Beth with them but she spends her days inside studying her game, her opponents. They do manage to convince her the day before the tournament, she walks through the zoo in the rain and buys beer from a cart on the side of the path. She sees Borgov and his family at one exhibit, it’s strange to see him just out being a normal man, he almost looks less threatening. 

Beth spends the first couple days of the tournament costing easily, she wins all her games. She spends her evenings with the twins, down by the pool or studying her game. Alma is nowhere to be found though she supposes that might be a good thing, she is having fun. Though Beth is slightly worried, she’s been sick more often, she even had to stay in bed for a day, sick, since they’ve been here. 

Beth can’t say she’s particularly surprised when Manuel ditches them but she does feel bad for Alma. She promises to let herself be taken out for dinner. Then she meets her next opponent, he is young and Russian, a dangerous combination. There is no crowd around them like there is at Borgov’s games but they both attack with fast and hard, with precision. They play for hours, into the night, before calling an adjournment. She plays through the possible combinations for the rest of the game that evening, Alma stays in bed with a fever.

When they resume their game Beth gets up and lets herself wander as Georgi makes his move. She is restless sitting at the table, she already knows how this will play out. He falls his king to her as she knew he would, she is one step closer to playing Borgov. She asks him what he will do with the rest of his life if he becomes world champion, and she can’t help but feel like she is asking herself the same question. 

She finds Alma playing the piano in the lobby, a crowd gathered to watch her. She looks so happy, so content. And then they see it, the games for the finals have been posted, E. Harmon vs. V. Borgov. They go back to their room for lunch. Then it’s finally time, she smooths down her skirt and leaves her room. She gets pushed to the back of the elevator and listens as the Russians talk about her. Surprisingly Borgov is respectful in his analysis. It’s strange to hear what they think of her. 

From the beginning of the game, Beth knows she is going to lose. He attacks and everything she knows slips from her. She searches desperately for some opening, some crack in his armour but there is none. It’s worse than Benny, she knows there’s no hope for her. But she does not go quietly, she puts up a good fight. She starts to explain it to Alma when she gets back to their room. But then she looks at her, really looks, and sees the lifeless eyes staring at the ceiling. She feels a piece of her heart breaking, panic and terror swirling in her gut. 

They take her away, the hotel says they’ll pay to get her home to the States. Beth starts drinking then. She gets Gibson after Gibson on the plane. She drowns her grief in it. The house feels too big, too empty when she gets home. And then she gets a call from Harry Beltik, and he asks to train her for the summer and she accepts. She doesn’t want to be alone in Alma’s house.

Harry gives her books she has already read or wants to read and a handful she hasn’t. He loses every game he plays against her but still manages to tell her off for it. He tells her she needs to stop playing intuitively, to come with a plan. And whether she likes it or not she can see her game improving, she reads more, learns more, analyses games from the greats. They even study Benny Watts. But Harry is still painfully slower than her, doesn't see the five steps ahead that she does. 

Harry kisses her one night, they are outside playing in the backyard in candlelight. It reminds her of the boy from her Russian class, simultaneously too rough and too gentle. But Harry is nice and she desperately doesn’t want to be alone. So she closes her eyes and tells him to try again, this time when he presses his lips to hers she presses back. She leads him upstairs and they fuck on Alma’s floral bedspread, it seemed like a better idea than her bright pink room. Beth doesn’t understand the fanfare around sex. It must be better than this for people to be so into it. Even the few times she’s sunk her own hand into her underwear have been better than this. Harry fumbles as he holds her and when he takes off his shirt to a bare chest Beth can’t say she’s particularly disappointed. She keeps her bra on, lets him paw at her through it, she doesn’t want him to see the mark on her chest. At one point he brushes past it with his fumbling fingers and it feels so incredibly wrong that she almost asks him to stop. But then she thinks of Harry leaving her all alone in Alma’s house and lets him continue. Though when it’s over she can’t even feign that it was that good, just goes back to her latest book. 

Beth runs into Margaret at the store one day. She is pushing a baby carriage, a toddler babbling away in it. She tries to imagine herself in that position and can’t picture it. When she asks Harry about it later that evening he says that he believes there is more to life than chess. She doesn’t entirely believe it though. To her chess is everything. She lives and breathes chess. The thought of leaving it all behind to become some kind of housewife seems absurd. She comforts herself in the thought that her soulmate, whoever they may be, is probably just as obsessed with chess as her if the mark on her chest is anything to go by. 

She sees the newest copy of Chess Review has Benny Watts’ face on the cover and decides to buy it. Not just because of his face but as a reminder that she will have to face him again soon. And this time she plans on beating him. 

Harry leaves a couple days later, before he goes he gives her a copy of Morphy’s biography, tells her they are similar. Then pulls out a bottle of little green pills and she feels like the world is suddenly moving too fast. She resolves that she doesn’t need him or anybody. She came into this world alone and she doesn’t need to follow some washed-up college kid who spent all his money trying to get his teeth fixed because of a girl that beat him when she was 15. 

She goes to the US championships in Ohio, it’s held in some random college in the middle of nowhere. At night she takes the green pills Harry was so worried about and plays games on the ceiling at night. 

Benny strides into the dingy auditorium they are playing in with the same stupid hat and coat. This time he recognizes her and she feels something like butterflies in her stomach at her way he playfully calls her name. He somehow manages to tell her the exact things she was feeling when she played Borgov in his perfectly earnest way. For all the condolences she’s received about it this one somehow feels the most genuine. He knows what it’s like to lose to Borgov, how unfeeling and terrifying he actually is. 

They each go to their opposite sides of the stage and play their games. Beth flys through hers with ease. When she glances over Benny seems to have the same grace as he too crushes his opponents. Everyone here knows who the final game will be. 

She decides she should finally read Benny’s book if she’s going to be playing him. It’s as flashy and showy as she thought it would be but she can find under all that a genuine love for the game and respect for his fellow opponents. She finds herself agreeing with passages that seem to reflect her exact views. It’s almost eerie but she decides to bury that feeling and focus on his games that are printed in the chapters. 

She finds him after the games talking to a student reporter. He is using the voice he uses when he talks to the crowds that flock to him at the bigger tournaments. She realizes that’s not his actual voice, supposes that coming into this world so young he would have had to have learned some tricks on how to keep people entertained. They all have their ways of deflecting the press, questions they won’t answer. While she hides behind dark sunglasses and a mean expression he seems to hide behind bravado and complicated answers about old chess games.

He tells her he and some of the others have been playing speed chess in the student union and asks her to join. She brushes him off, tells him she has to study. He tells her to take a break. She asks him about the knife.

“It’s for protection.” There’s an edge to his voice when he says that, there’s a story there she knows but can see in the way his eyes harden he doesn’t want to talk about it. She knows a thing or two about stories better left untold.

“From what?”

“From whatever.” There’s definitely something. Something that makes the famed Benny Watts scared. It almost scares her too, there is something that makes him scared enough to carry a knife openly in public. “Study hard.” He walks away, into the bright and sunny afternoon.

She spends the rest of her evening studying, going back through Benny’s old games on her chessboard. She decides she needs more coffee to keep going and walks across the campus to the student union. The other competitors stare as she passes, some glare at her for beating them earlier but most just gawk open-mouthed like she is some alien species. 

“Beth!” She turns at her name being called. She sees Benny, for once sans hat and jacket, sitting with two other men in front of a chessboard. 

She is beckoned over and decides it would be rude to not at least say hi. She is introduced to the other two men before her attention is pointed towards the game. She studies the board then moves the knight. Benny looks up at the others and points to her.

“See.”

“Maybe you’re right.”

“I know I’m right and Beth sees things the same way I do.” She can’t help but feel like he’s not just talking about the one move, the way he seems to be staring into her soul.

She goes to leave but Benny pulls her back, stares at her imploringly as he asks to play speed chess. And somehow he manages to convince her into taking a seat across from him, one of the other boys going off to get her intended coffee. She agrees to one game, the terms are $5 a game and so they are off. 

Benny moves his pieces so quickly she doesn't have time to think, she just moves. It almost feels like she is 9 again and not understanding the rules, just moving the pieces without strategy. But Beth is nothing if not competitive so when Benny wins and she hands over the $5 and he suggests another she nods. And they play again. And again. And again and again. They play until she’s given up at least $100 and have drawn a crowd. She’s pretty sure half these people don’t even play chess.

She should feel humiliated like she had when she played Borgov. Instead, she can’t keep the grin off her face when she gets back to her room. She’s invigorated. She wraps herself in Alma’s old housecoat and lies in bed trying to stop her racing heartbeat. She can’t get the image out of her head, Benny staring up at her from underneath his eyelashes between moves. She admits to herself that he’s kind of cute, with his golden hair, and he’s whip-smart, a sarcastic mother fucker, and he’s fucking good at chess. Whoever his soulmate is is a lucky woman indeed. She hasn’t heard of him being in a relationship with anyone but it’s not impossible. She falls asleep stroking at her own soulmark.

Benny finds her in the afternoon the next day. She had taken his advice, didn’t spend it all studying. She finished his book then went for a walk around the campus. Now she is sitting on a bench people-watching. She watches all the college students and thinks about what Harry said and her conversation with Georgi in Mexico. If she didn’t have chess what would she be?

He leans against the back of the bench she is on.

“It’s going to be you or me.” He comes and sits next to her, looks out over the grass where everyone is laid out, almost like pieces on a board.

“Are you trying to psyche me out?” It would be the most obvious answer.

“No, I don’t need to do that to beat you.” She thinks back to the night before and the many games he won. “Listen I’m sorry about yesterday I wasn’t trying to hustle you.”

“Weren’t you?” She thinks of his voice egging her on at the end of each game. Again?

“Come on, Beth. You’re the best player here.” A jolt of pride goes through her at that moment, she’s been called many things, never the best. “I’ve been watching your games, you attack like Alekhine.”

She tries to argue back, he’s beat her so far every time they’ve played. He says that speed chess doesn’t count and she’s a different player than in Las Vegas. He says she has a chance. 

“Do you ever go over games in your head?” She thinks of the chessboard that appears on her ceiling each night. “Like when you’re alone, play all the way through them?”

“Doesn’t everybody?” She wants to argue back that Harry doesn’t. But Harry’s not like them, he said so himself, he doesn’t love it like they do. 

She meets him the next day on stage, shakes his hand then they sit on either side of the board. And then for the first time in her life, Beth Harmon beats Benny Watts at chess. She is the US Champion. All by herself this time, no shared titles, just her.

After the game, they go to the bar together. She orders drink after drink as they go over the game. He tells her that now she will be invited to Moscow to play against the Russians, all of them, not just Borgov. He makes a comment about her drinking then and she feels the walls she had slowly been letting down come back up and she snipes back at him. And maybe she is a little drunk because without really thinking about it she reaches up and brushes a lock of hair out of his eyes. It’s just soft as she looks and she wants to bury her face in it, she wonders what kind of shampoo he uses.

“I like your hair.” What kind of stupid line is that? She chastises herself. Though it’s not entirely untrue, she does really like his hair. 

Luckily he takes it in stride and changes the topic back to Moscow. She’s unsure though, she couldn’t even make a dent when she played Borgov last time. How is she supposed to go up against him on his home turf?

“You’ll need a good trainer.” Is he suggesting what she thinks he is? “Not Harry Beltik. Someone, better.”

“And who do you have in mind?” 

“Can you come to New York?” 

She wants so desperately to say yes, to spend the next 5 weeks sleeping on his couch, spending every day playing chess with him. But she doesn’t even know if she wants to go to Paris anymore, let alone Moscow. Borgov tore her to pieces last time they played and it feels almost wrong to go to Europe without Alma. But Benny pushes back and really she doesn’t have anything better to do. He calls her the best again and she’s sold. They settle the details about travel, they are to drive from here tomorrow afternoon. He leaves with a departing promise for no sex which has her rolling her eyes yet wondering what he might look like under his ridiculous get-up. 

Benny drives an obnoxious powder blue beetle. It has a functioning radio though so she can’t really fault it. They spend the drive listening to music and playing games in their head and practicing their Russian. She watches the scenery pass and change until they come upon New York City in all its glory. Benny drives them through the city and stops in front of a row of brick townhouses. He leads her to the basement apartment. The entranceway is narrow and full of trash and it leads to steep concrete stairs that go down. The actual apartment isn’t all that much better. It’s cold and damp and incredibly bare, it’s open concept except for a bedroom off in one corner, and there’s very little furniture to fill up the space. There’s not even a couch. The one thing there is is lots of chess things. There’s a board already set up on the table, and Benny’s old trophies sit on the windowsill, old copies of Chess Review are lying around and there are stacks of books along one wall. 

She isn’t terribly surprised when he comes and unrolls an air mattress, it’s tiny and she doesn’t even get sheets. He tells her there’s no booze in the apartment and she replies truthfully that she didn’t think there would be. He closes the door to his room and she is left in the middle of this concrete box inflating a tiny air mattress. She’s not sure if this was her best decision. No matter how pretty Benny may be, how good a chess player he is. She will have to spend the next 5 weeks sleeping on his living room floor. 

Beth wakes up the next morning by loud sirens, seemingly just outside the window and Benny making coffee in jeans and a floral robe tied tightly over his chest, it seems Benny is just as ridiculous in his own home. She showers and gets dressed and by the time she is done Benny has set up a chessboard and a stack of books at the table. When she asks about breakfast he just tells her eggs are in the fridge. She makes herself an omelette and finishes her coffee then finally sits down across the chessboard from him. 

They settle into a routine, Benny gets up first, makes coffee, Beth will then get up and make breakfast for the two of them, they will take turns showering and getting dressed then start on their games for the day. In the morning they go over old games, usually Borgov or other Russians. Then they scrape together something for lunch, sometimes they forget to eat all together, too caught up in their game. After lunch, they switch to the long-dead masters, the ones who invented the different openings and combinations. They study how the greats played. They make dinner together, the two of them working side by side in the tiny kitchen. It turns out Benny is a decent cook. After dinner, they play their own game, just the two of them playing against each other. These are Beth’s favourite games. Even if she now has the title of American champion Benny is still good, their games often come to draws or they’re both too tired to continue and end for the night. The apartment grows on her, it could almost be called quaint. It’s almost domestic, living here with Benny, sharing meals, a chessboard constantly set up, reading over each other’s shoulder as they go through old games.

One night, a couple weeks before she’s due to be in Paris, Benny has friends over. Two European chess players, including a grandmaster and a beautiful french model. Beth feels simultaneously at ease and on edge around Cleo. She’s gorgeous in a way that stirs something in Beth, she introduces herself with a kiss on both cheeks. Beth has spent the past five years surrounded by men, it’s nice to be around another woman (someone her own age, for as much as she loved Alma she wasn’t a friend, she was a mother). When Beth is offered a drink, she looks and sees Benny watching her carefully. Under his gaze, she declines. She has only one goal now, to get to Paris and beat Borgov. Cleo is warm in a way no one Beth has ever met is, she tells Beth about meeting Benny and she feels something twist in her gut. Cleo brushes it off though and she feels her walls coming down around the woman. 

Benny suggests a simultaneous, she can feel the gazes of the other men. They feel predatory, watching her with hungry eyes. So she does what she does best, she stares Benny Watts in the eye and ups the stakes. When she puts out the challenge she can see he won’t back down. And so they play speed chess. This time she is controlled, she knows more now, is not just moving pieces. She beats all of them and then suggests another. And then another until she has gotten back all the money she had lost last time she played speed chess. 

Cleo hugs her before she leaves and tells her to look her up when she’s in Paris. Then she leaves, leaving the apartment feeling strangely quiet. Benny tells her how no one had done that to her in 15 years, not even Borgov. Then he gives her a look that makes her feel like she has been set on fire. Instead of doing anything though he retreats to his bedroom, she remembers the no sex rule he had given her at the beginning of her stay. She starts towards the other side of the living room to get her air mattress but is stopped by a hand on her arm. 

“Do you still like my hair?” 

Next thing she knows he is kissing her, hard, and dragging her into his room. He fucks her and for the first time, Beth understands what all the fuss is about sex. She comes harder than she has in her whole life, multiple times. She even feels comfortable enough the last time, as he is taking her from behind, to let her bra come off. And then they lie there, him on top of her, both breathing heavily for a few blissful seconds. But Benny has to ruin it, he starts talking about chess and Beth can feel the same crushing feelings of disappointment and inadequacy she feels when she thinks of the man from her childhood that she watched drive away from the window of her trailer. She pushes him off and wraps the sheets more securely around herself and falls asleep angry at herself to think that Benny Watts could ever think of her as anything more than the female chess prodigy. She spends her final two weeks sleeping on the air mattress ignoring any thoughts she may have of sneaking into Benny’s bed.

She arrives in Paris feeling ready. Good things will happen here, she can feel it. She is on a panel with the other players a couple days before the start of the tournament. The reporters ask all sorts of questions. They ask Borgov about how he feels playing against such young people. He gives a slightly cheeky answer, says he’ll probably die with his head on a chessboard, she relates to that idea. She doesn’t know who she is without chess. Unlike Harry Beltik she can’t just leave it all behind and go to college or settle down. Then they ask what she says to the people who say she’s too glamorous for chess. She feels a bit cheated, Borgov got questions about what it’s like to play and she got questions about her fashion. She replies with a snarky remark about Adam's Apples. The audience titters with laughter but she really shocks them when she speaks Russian. 

Beth breezes through the first few days of the tournament. All her extra study has paid off. Though she is playing some of the best in the world she is confident and self-assured in her moves. She knows what she’s doing. She's studied them all and her own games. She knows her weaknesses and has strengthened her defence. In the evening she goes back to her room and studies some more. She tries not to think of the past 5 weeks spent in Benny’s apartment, analyzing games, playing them out for themselves on the chessboard at the tiny kitchen table. She misses it in some ways, Benny’s snarky remarks as they played, the focused look in his eye as he studied the board. She wonders if he’ll let her back before Russia, help train her more. 

She gets a call the night before the final, her against Borgov. Cleo is downstairs at the bar. Beth brushes her off, thinking about Benny’s face when she had been offered a drink by the same woman only two weeks ago. But as she sits in her room she thinks of Alma telling her to relax before a tournament and how alluring Cleo was the last time she had met her. Fuck it, she thinks, Benny Watts doesn’t get to control her, he isn’t even here, she can allow herself one drink.

She finds Cleo at the bar, sipping on something. They talk about trivial things for a bit. Beth imagines what it would be like to live in Paris. When she really thinks about it there’s nothing keeping her in Kentucky, not really. Then suddenly they are talking about fucking and love. 

“Have you ever been in love?”

“Not with Benny.” She doesn’t want to think of the possibility of loving Benny. He might be pretty and good in bed but that doesn’t make him someone she’s in love with.

“Of course not, no woman can compete with Benny’s love for himself.” She thinks of the way he had so easily slipped into talk about chess, like she meant nothing, lying naked in his bed. Cleo seems to catch something in her look though.

“We are still in love I see.” Beth wants to argue back that no she’s not, she can’t be. “Found your soulmate have you?”

“No, I thought I might have, but no.”

Cleo nods in understanding and then turns to the men sitting in the corner that have been watching them.

“Let’s see how many lies they tell.” She walks over in their direction and Beth watches. 

Beth knows she should go back to her room now, continue to look at Borgov’s games from throughout the tournament or go to bed. But her head is spinning with thoughts of soulmates and Benny Watts and she doesn’t want to think of any of that now. So she follows Cleo over to the corner and lets the men buy her drinks. Then, drunk, she lets Cleo up to her hotel room. 

It’s messier than the other times she’s had sex. They’re drunk and giggling. But Cleo knows how to touch her in a way only women do to make her feel things she’s never felt before. Cleo’s soulmark is of a candle on her thigh, and Beth tries very hard not to touch it when she returns the favour. Cleo had been careful to do the same to her, she remembers the sense of wrongness that had come whenever anyone had touched it in the past. She then realizes of all her lovers Cleo is the only one to have seen her soulmark, even Benny hadn’t seen it, she’d been on her stomach by that point. She giggles at the thought, Cleo, lying beside, laughs as well. Their laughter filling the room.

The next thing Beth remembers is waking up to someone pounding on her door. She pulls herself out of the bathtub she inexplicably is in and answers it. That’s when it all comes crashing down, she’s supposed to play Borgov. She rushes around her room getting dressed and manages to dry her hair mostly. She runs with her shoes in hand through the hotel, cursing herself the entire way. How could she have done this? She doesn’t know exactly how late she is but she knows it’s bad. 

She stops before the double doors that lead to the large ballroom she’ll be playing in. She slips her shoes on and takes a deep breath, squaring her shoulders, she can take this with dignity, she is still the US champion. She pushes the doors open and is assaulted by the bright flashing lights of cameras going off. It makes her already hungover head pound. But she pushes that away and goes to shake Borgov’s hand and sit down across from him. She moves her first piece then pours herself a glass of water. She knows she’s a mess but she can’t think straight. Her head is pounding and she might still be slightly drunk and she’s falling apart. Borgov destroys her and no one is surprised. When she gets back to her room Cleo is gone but has left a note apologizing for everything that happened. Beth doesn't blame her though, it’s her own fault. 

Benny calls her that night. He asks her to come back to New York but she can hear the accusation in his tone, the disappointment. She can’t face him. Not after she went and messed up everything they had worked for over the past few weeks. Cause that’s what she is, a screw-up. A stupid little orphan girl who thought she could be good at something. But no one wants her in the end. She’s better off saving herself from the heartbreak. She goes home to Kentucky, to the big blue house. 

The mail has piled up on her doorstep and she realizes how long it’s been since she’s been home. When she gets in her phone is ringing and the man on the other end tells her that Mr. Wheatley, the man who walked out on his wife and their newly adopted child, the man who didn’t even care when said wife died in a foreign country, doesn’t want to sign over the title of the house. Beth has nowhere else to go if she can't stay in this house. Nowhere else would want her. So when he comes and throws at her that he didn’t even want her she doesn’t flinch. She throws it right back at him. She buys back the house and focuses on this one thing she can control. She goes through the whole house and cleans out all of Alma’s stuff, sticks in the attic in storage and then redecorates. She buys new furniture and rips down the stupid curtains that seemed to be everywhere. She feels reinvigorated, she has taken a step back from the chess world for a little bit. 

Then she gets a letter from the Christian Crusaders offering to pay for her to go to Russia. She calls Benny to ask about it and he tells her to take the money. They’ll pay for everything. And then he asks about her coming to New York. She can’t face him though not yet, she needs to play another game, prove to herself that she can still win before that. She hides behind the excuse of her new house. 

“I miss you.” She can hear the earnestness in his voice, the same as when he beat her for the first time in Las Vegas. She doesn’t know how to respond so she doesn’t. He moves the topic back to safe territory, chess. He tells her to study and she does but it’s incredibly boring to do alone. She finds there’s no food in her house and decides to go out to eat. When they ask about drinks she thinks about it, it’s not like she has a game against the world champion tomorrow, she orders a Gibson, for Alma she thinks. 

One drink turns into another and then she goes to the liquor store on her way home. She’s drunk when she gets a call from Harry Beltik. She doesn’t want to talk to him, doesn’t want to talk to anyone. The world is too big right now and her brain won’t stop spinning and she doesn’t want to do any of it anymore. She leaves the receiver hanging off the line when she hangs up. She spends the next few days getting drunk. She doesn’t know how much time passes but eventually the days bleed into weeks. She just keeps drinking. She sometimes thinks of Benny telling her she’d be washed up by 21 and she thinks he may be right. She doesn’t like those thoughts, tries to drown them in more alcohol. 

She wakes up one day to her phone ringing, she is passed out on the floor of her living room. She answers it and remembers that she told the local tournament that she would come see their tournament. She remembers it’s tomorrow, though she’s not really sure what today is. She goes to look at her watch and realizes somehow the face got damaged. Her gift from Alma, the one tangible thing she had left of her. She wants to cry but instead goes to her fridge for a beer. 

She pulls up to the same high school she beat Harry Beltik at, where she had her very first tournament. She walks inside and is greeted by the organizer she had talked to on the phone. Her head is pounding with a hangover and she asks him for some aspirin. She turns and is blinded by the flashing of cameras that just make her head feel worse. She shoos them away and hears a voice calling her name. She sees Annette Packer standing there. It’s all a bit too much, being back here with her now standing in front of her. She tells her about how it was an honour to play Beth and how she’s an inspiration and Beth thinks she needs a drink. The man from before comes back as she’s putting a cigarette to her lips and he tells her she can’t smoke in here. She goes outside but her hands are shaking too much to properly light it. She curses as she finally gets it to light and takes a deep breath.

She looks up and sees Harry Beltik standing in front of her. She knows he’s been calling and she thinks he might have come to her door at some point too. He says he’s worried about her, that she’s seen her at the supermarket. He tells her his dad drank and that she needs help and she lashes out. She can’t stand this. Her name is called and she realizes she has places to be. But she can’t do it, she can’t stand in front of some room full of chess nerds like some prize, something to be shown off. So she runs. She runs all the way home and locks her doors and closes the curtains and gets drunk. 

When she wakes up there is someone knocking incessantly at her door. She thinks it’s Harry, come to tell more about why she needs help like she doesn’t already know how much of a screw up she is. When she opens the door though there’s a black woman with an afro in a leather jacket standing there. 

“Jesus fucking christ.” She says, taking off her sunglasses. “Who the hell are you?” And that sparks recognition in her.

“Jolene?” She asks. 

“It’s me Cracker.” She says with a wry grin.

Beth pulls Jolene into a hug and motions her into the house. She comes in and Beth rushes to make tea. She hears Jolene call out from the living room. It’s only now that she realizes how dirty her house has become. Then she tells her that Mr. Shaibel died. That stops her in her tracks, her hands come up to the pawn he gave her, she still wears it after all this time. Jolene tells her that there’s a funeral, that they should go together. Then she looks around, at the mess her house has become, her life has become. 

“God Beth.”

“Yeah, I know.” Because she does, she’s spiralling out of control and she doesn’t know how to stop it.

Jolene is nice though, helps her clean up the worst of the mess and make dinner. Later when they are brushing their teeth for the night Jolene tells her that she’s a paralegal and that she has plans to go to college. Beth thinks of the soulmark she saw on her all those years ago, then of her own soulmark. She feels bad for whoever her soulmate is, they don’t deserve her, she’s a mess. She tells Jolene about how trapped she feels and Jolene, in her pragmatic, blunt way, tells her she dug herself into a hole she has to get herself out.

“Besides, I got you a present.” She goes to her bag and pulls out Modern Chess Openings. “I was pissed at you for being adopted.” Beth opens up the front cover and sees her name printed at the top of the first page. She thinks of that little girl who was so excited and mesmerized by chess. She resolves for that little girl that she will play again, she won't let herself become a drunk. 

On the way to Methuen Jolene tells her about how she met a rich white man at work. 

“Is he, you know?”

“I don’t know, I haven’t asked.”

They both laugh at this. Beth is not so sure she believes in soulmates anymore. She doesn’t know anyone who seems to have found theirs or if they have they don’t seem all that happy. She thinks of Alma and her excitement to see Manuel on the way to Mexico and Cleo with her pretty soulmark fucking her in Paris. Maybe one doesn’t need to find their soulmate to be happy. Maybe they can be happy all on their own. 

The Methuen Home for Girls is just as intimidating as it was when she first arrived. She suddenly feels like a small child again. And in some ways she still is, still addicted to little green pills. When Jolene asks if she wants to go in she says no. 

Mr. Shaibel’s funeral is a dreary affair. There are maybe half a dozen people spread out in the church that don’t seem all that upset and the priest gives a bland sermon and says some bullshit things about work ethic. Beth changes her mind about going back in, she wants to see the basement again. When she goes down she finds it to be the same as it always was, the only difference being on one wall there’s a whole bunch of newspaper clippings. As she approaches she realizes they are about her, he’s collected all the articles that had been written about her over the years. She finds the picture that was taken of the two of them by Mr. Ganz all those years ago. She remembers how proud he had been of her when she went and beat the entire high school team. Her resolve strengthens even more, she will get herself back on track, she will go to Russia and she will beat all of them. Whatever it takes.

Jolene stays for the weekend, helps her clean up her house, gets rid of all the alcohol. Beth calls the Christian Crusaders and tells them that yes she will accept the money and she will be playing in Russia in a few months. They come to her house. They ask for her to give a statement, she reads over it and realizes it’s all a bunch of religious crap she doesn’t believe in anyway. She’s pretty sure Benny never had to make a statement like this. So she makes a decision, she gives all the money back. It means she won’t be able to play anywhere until she goes to Russia and she has no idea where she’ll scrape together enough but if she’s going to do this she’s going to do it her way.

Next, she calls Benny. It feels so good to hear his voice even if it’s down a telephone line. He jokes back and forth with her about being crazy and she feels better than she has in weeks. But then he’s telling her off, rubbing all her bad decisions back in her face and just like that her mood plummets. 

“Don’t call me again.” It rings through her head, pierces through her heart. Now she actually feels like crying. She desperately needs a drink. Instead, she just sits there, on her stairs and stares up at the ceiling. She doesn’t know why it hurts this bad, why Benny Watts has any control over her life. She shouldn’t care, he’s just some stupid fucking pirate, he’s not even US champion anymore. 

She calls everywhere she can think of to get the money. The chess federation says they could maybe spare $400 but that will barely cover her flight. The state department takes forever to also tell her no. Though they are now sending her with a babysitter to “keep her safe”. It’s finally after a game of squash with Jolene, she’s been teaching her, that Jolene offers up the money. She calls them sisters and Beth has to agree. She thinks back to sitting in a bathroom touching each other’s soulmarks and how no one has really seen hers since. The only other person had been Cleo and she had been so drunk she probably doesn’t remember.

She trains hard. Gets back into the schedule she kept while living with Benny. She goes over all of not just Borgov’s games but all the Russians. And before she knows it the time has come and she is on a flight to Russia. Her handler from the state department is obnoxious and annoying and not in an endearing way. He gives her a list of complicated rules to follow. 

Russia is beautiful, everything is old and historic in a way nothing in America is. Everything feels more important. The chess is certainly grander. They play in a long hall with beautiful wooden boards set up and stands that are packed with people watching. Each player gets announced one by one as they walk out to take their places at their respective boards. There’s even a special performance of a string quartet just for the players. It’s all a bit surreal. 

In terms of the actual chess play, it feels just like any other tournament. The first few rounds of players all underestimate her. She quickly and cleanly ends them. Picks them off the board as she makes her way to the top. Every day there is a gathering crowd of people who wait outside after the games and mob her as she tries to get to her car. She feels like a proper celebrity. During her time off she takes walks through the nearby park or sits in the hotel lobby and reads about chess. She’s determined this time, nothing will break her focus. 

During her adjournment with Luchenko, she walks past his room. She looks inside and sees him and Borgov and another player looking over a chessboard and talking. She remembers what Benny had told her about the Russian, they play as a team, that’s what makes them so deadly. She wishes she could have a team here or at the very least a second. She beats Luchenko by herself though and he tells her she’s the best he’s ever played. She wants to celebrate with someone but there’s no one here, only her scary state department agent. 

She makes it all the way to the final against Borgov, just as she’d planned. The night before she flushes her pills down the toilet. She can do this all on her own. Then she calls the front desk and asks them where she could get more. Ultimately though, she just goes to bed. She gets up the next morning and gets dressed and puts on her makeup then has breakfast. She goes to the car with her bodyguard when called and rides to the hall where the matches are being held in silence. Outside there is a crowd of screaming fans that swarm her as she enters the building. When she gets called for her games she enters with purpose, walks down the long aisle to where the board is set up in the middle. She shakes hands with Borgov then sits down across from him for the third time.

She plays the Queen’s Gambit, remembers Mr. Sahibel teaching it to her in the basement then reading about it in Modern Chess Openings. Borgov fights back against her moves, he remains just as composed as he had during the rest of their games. They stop following any particular pattern and just play, Borgov against Harmon. They have both studied they know what they’re up against, but they’re both trying to surprise each other. She’s not sure what the outcome of it all will be. For the first time, she feels like she has a shot at beating Borgov. Borgov calls for an adjournment and she studies the board, commits it to memory, before following him out of the hall. There are reporters scrambling to ask her questions when she gets out. She just wants to go to bed but stops and answers some questions about Mr. Shaibel and her current game. She goes to walk away but is stopped by a familiar voice. 

Townes steps forward and she has never been more grateful for a familiar face. She rushes up and hugs him. She thinks that maybe she’s not a complete lost cause. There might not be a whole team of soviet chess players but two heads are better than one or whatever. They stay up talking and decide that being friends would be a good decision for them. She is woken up the next morning by Townes and coffee. The phone rings and he picks it up, not burdened with the same stupid rules she is. He looks excited as he passes her the phone. 

“Hello?” She can’t think of anyone who would be calling her.

“If he goes for the knight, hit him with the king rook pawn.” She recognizes that voice, the one that only a month ago told her to never call him again.

“Benny?” She asks, her voice coming out in a gasp. Hearing his voice feels like suddenly she’s in his apartment again, listening to him lecture on about middle game strategy. It feels strangely like home.

He just keeps going with his strategy but she’s not paying attention. He’s there talking to her, even while she’s in Moscow, he read about the game in the Times and then made a phone call across the world to talk to her about strategy. And then the phone gets passed to Harry and she learns that he put a team together, just for her. They talk for hours, going over strategy, each one of them taking a different way and playing it through with her. Before she knows it it’s time for her to leave. She tells Benny, she’s been talking to just him for the past few minutes, going over everything she knew again.

“Go beat him.” He says it with the same earnestness, the same belief in her, that Annette Packer had said it at her first-ever tournament. She knows, whatever happens, she will have people to come home to. She’s not alone, not anymore.

When she arrives at the hall there’s an even bigger crowd than the day before and a large board set up with the actual board inside laid out on it. The entire world seems to be watching this chess game. She takes her seat inside, across from Borgov and they begin again. For the first time, he seems almost rattled. They play through one of the variations they had gone over earlier that day until suddenly Borgov makes a move she wasn’t expecting. She takes a deep breath and imagines a chessboard in her mind. She looks up at the ceiling and it’s there. The chessboard she had only ever seen while high was there for her. She watched as the different potential variations played through at lightning speed until she figured it out. She could do it, she could beat him. After a couple moves he seems to see it too, he offers her a draw. But there’s no way she’ll back down now. No this time she’s actually going to do it. She’s going to win.

So they play on. Each taking each other’s pieces then winning them back. But she has a plan now, she’s not some scared kid from Kentucky anymore. And then she’s done it. She moves her king and Borgov looks at the board. Then carefully he picks up his king and offers it to her. She shakes his hand and the crowd cheers. Suddenly she’s crying and Borgov is pulling her into a hug. Somehow she, Beth Harmon, the scrawny little orphan from Kentucky, has done it. She’s the world champion.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I realized while writing this chapter that Beth 100% has a praise kink. I don't write smut but if there are any smut writers out there, think about it.


	3. Endgame

Beth feels like she’s floating as she leaves the hall they were playing in. The crowd that had gathered earlier is now chanting her name and screaming as she exits. She breezes through them to her car, vaguely aware of the hands clapping her on the back. She stops when she gets to her car and looks back at the crowd, the reality of it settling in. She finds Townes in the middle of it. He gives her a smile and in it, she sees the reflection of Mr. Shaibel’s pride when she beat him or Benny’s when she found a flaw in an old Ruben Fine game. She smiles back at him and he lifts his camera up to take her picture then she gets into the car to take her back to her hotel. 

She gets back to her room and finds the scattered notes she had taken during her call with the boys, her chessboard still set up halfway through a play they had been discussing. She laughs out loud at that, she’s giddy on the high of her win. She jumps onto her bed, reminiscent of how she had the first time she had been in a hotel with Alma. She wishes she had found a way to convince Benny to be here with her so they could go out and celebrate together. It feels lonely to celebrate alone. 

Beth decides that though she may be alone she can still celebrate on her own. She orders cake from room service. Then she turns on the tv and flips through the channels until she finds one that is playing some upbeat pop music in english. She turns it up and starts dancing around the room, jumping on her bed like a child, laughing at the absurdity that is her life. She feels a giddy sort of happiness that she hadn’t felt in a long time, possibly ever. She finally calms down a bit by the time her food comes. It’s delicious and worth every penny she spent.

She starts crashing after she eats, the excitement of her long day finally catching up with her. She climbs into bed and falls asleep surprisingly quickly. That night she has a weird, yet not entirely unpleasant, dream. There are scenes of her and her mother, they are at a beach and the sun is setting. Her mother is holding her in her lap and for once not touting the dangers of falling in love. Instead, singing a lullaby about soulmates. Interspersed with that is another scene, this time she is lying in a bed that feels familiar though she cannot place from where. She is also being held in this scene though she can’t see the person’s face, she is lying on their chest and they are tracing patterns up her arm. Finally, there is a chessboard, with pieces that look so familiar but she can’t figure out from where, her opponent is laughing as they move a piece but she can’t look up at them, her eyes glued to the board. 

When she wakes up she feels strangely refreshed and at peace, the dream already fading from her mind. She gets dressed and goes down to the restaurant next to the lobby for breakfast. Most of the players of the tournament are there already, nursing coffee cups looking hungover. She gets herself some coffee and food and sits down at a nearby table. Her state department bodyguard sits down across from her and tells her their flight is leaving that afternoon and that there’s a final farewell for the players this morning.

After breakfast, Beth goes back to her room to pack. She had hung everything up in the closet when she first arrived to make sure there would be no creases so she has to refold everything. Then she carefully packs up her chessboard and nestles it in amongst her clothes to keep it from getting damaged on her trip home. Then she sees the paper she and Townes had scribbled moves on while talking to the boys the previous day. They seem too important, too precious, to just throw away. Instead, she carefully folds them and presses them into the pages of her book to keep them from getting crumpled. She does one final look around her room to make sure she hasn’t missed anything.

Beth is called down to the lobby with all the other players after she packed. She takes a seat amongst them, feeling comfortable surrounded by the best in the world. The organizers of the tournament thank them all for coming and playing and congratulate her on her win. They are then led to a conference room full of reporters and other press people.

Someone asks Borgov what he thought of finally falling to her. He glances at her and smiles softly.

“She was a valiant opponent. Wouldn’t have wanted to give it up to anyone else.” Beth could feel herself blush slightly at the compliment.

“Ms. Harmon, what was it like to finally win against Borgov?” Another voice called from the audience for her.

“A bit surreal really. It felt like everything had been leading to this moment, so to actually do it- I don’t think I can describe it.

“To what do you owe your success?” Is the question sexist? Definitely, you would think after becoming a world champion she wouldn’t have to deal with this anymore. Luckily Beth has been answering these sorts of questions her entire life. 

“A good chess player once said that the reason the Soviets are such masters of chess is because they play as a team. Us Americans are individualists but I think there’s something to be said for playing with a team. I’ve been told since I began playing that I am gifted, and I am, but I have also had the opportunity to play and learn from some other amazing chess players. I worked hard to get here but I was helped along the way by lots of people both on and off the board. Those people know who they are and it’s them that I owe my success to.” She thinks of Mr. Sahibel teaching her to play in the basement, of Alma excitedly getting them organized for tournaments even if she knew nothing about chess. She thinks of Jolene showing up to her house and pulling her out of the hole she was in, Harry Beltik staying in her house and teaching her all the things he’d learnt from books. She thinks of Benny, the 5 weeks spent training in his apartment, hearing his voice over the phone just a day ago. She does have her own little team, they might not be the best chess players in the world but they care.

The rest of the press conference passes, they ask the other competitors about their experience. She gets a few questions about what she will do next. She’s not sure but probably play chess. Once the reporters have had their fill the players are ushered into the dining room for a final lunch before they all leave. She sits at the head of the table this time, chats amicably with the woman sitting next to her. She’s somebody’s wife, she’s not sure who, and for once she doesn’t have to talk about chess. After lunch she is on her way back to her room when she is stopped by one of the other players, she thinks he might be from Norway. He asks for an autograph.

“For my daughter.” He explains and she smiles.

She asks for the girl’s name and writes her a note. Remember, girls can do anything a man can do. We do it better. She signs her name properly with a flourish, better than the scribbles she had been giving out before. The man thanks her profusely and walks off. She goes back to her room and waits until her state department handler comes and gets her. 

They get into the car that had been driving them around for their stay. He starts talking about her playing at the Whitehouse and how she has all sorts of interviews lined up for her when they get back. He’s talking like she doesn’t have a choice. Like it’s just a given that she will follow behind them, tell everyone how her time in Russia was miserable and how she beat communism through chess or something. She doesn’t care about any of that. She just wants to play chess and see her friend again. 

She leans forward and asks the driver to stop and gets out, hearing the man sputtering behind her. She’s in the same park she had walked through a few days earlier, the one with the square full of people playing chess. That’s where she’s headed now. She wanders through the boards, watching games these old men are playing. She’s not really sure what she’s supposed to do now, just that she needed to get out of that car. Then someone recognizes her, calls her name and she nods. After they have swarmed her though, and she’s signed autographs and shaken hands with them all, she sits down and plays a game of chess.

She stays there until it gets dark, playing all these old Russian men in chess. Winning, she does have a title to uphold. Some of them give her a decent run though. She plays just for the fun of it, no clock ticking next to her, no way to record her moves so they can be printed in Chess Review later. She plays and laughs and watches the way the men’s eyes light up when she pins their kings. They remind her of playing Mr. Shaibel. Every time her state department man tries to get her to leave the Russians brush him off and someone new takes the seat opposite her.

She walks back to the hotel as the sun is setting, watches the way the light bounces off the buildings. When she gets back to the hotel her assigned agent walks off grumbling about making new flight reservations and tells her the rules still apply. She rolls her eyes at this. Maybe she can convince him to let her see the city a bit more before they leave.

It’s only once she gets back to her room that she realizes she doesn’t have her luggage. She has her purse so she has her id and some money but she doesn’t know what happened to the rest of her stuff, she figures Mr. State Department has it. She sighs and sits down on her bed. She picks up her phone and calls the number Jolene had given to her, she has the money to pay the long-distance now. She sits waiting for Jolene to pick up. 

“Hello?”

“Jolene.”

“Beth?”

“Yeah.”

“What are you doing? Aren’t you supposed to be coming home soon?”

“Yeah, I may have gotten a bit sidetracked playing chess with old Russian men. I’m coming home tomorrow. Could you pick me up at the airport?”

“Yes I can, what time do you get in?” Beth tells her her flight details and when she should be getting in. “Great I should go, this is gonna cost you a pretty penny. Oh and Cracker? Congratulations.”

“Thank you.”

Beth hangs up and lies back in bed. She has nothing to do for the rest of the evening, her books and chessboard in her luggage. She stares up at the ceiling and debates whether it’s too early to go to bed. She is pulled from her thoughts by a knock on her door. She gets up and opens it and is surprised to see Borgov standing on the other side. 

“Would you like to join me for a drink?” He asks.

“I’m trying this whole sober thing.” She says regrettably, she would love to share a drink with Borgov, talk about strategy and chess and even things not related to chess. Though he’s been her rival for the past few years he is also a master at chess and she admires him.

“Ah well, what about hot chocolate? You cannot come to Russia without trying our hot chocolate.”

“Alright.” 

She follows Borgov to the deserted restaurant, they sit at a table near the windows and she watches Moscow at night as they wait for their beverages. 

“Weren't you supposed to be on a flight home right now?” Borgov asks.

“Ha yeah, I may have gotten a bit sidetracked playing with some men in the park. I have another flight tomorrow afternoon.”

Borgov nods at this like he understands. Before he can ask anything else their drinks arrive. The waiter gives them an adoring look as he puts down the drinks but thankfully doesn’t ask for an autograph. Beth stares at the drink in front of her and the spoon that came along with it. She looks up at Borgov who gives a laugh before he picks up his own spoon and takes a spoonful of his drink. It’s thick, almost like warm pudding, and rich and Beth closes her eyes as she takes a bite, savours the flavour. 

“What do you think you’ll do now?” She asks, she is genuinely curious, maybe it’ll give her insight into what she’s supposed to do now.

“I don’t know, probably spend more time with my family, raise my boy. I won’t leave chess completely. I don’t think I could if I tried. What will you do?”

“I have no idea, go back home I guess.” She thinks of telling Cleo that there was nothing for her in Kentucky, she doesn’t know if that’s true. “They want me to play the President and go on a whole press tour.”

“And what do you want to do?”

“Play chess.”

They sit in silence for a few moments. It’s not comfortable but it’s not entirely uncomfortable either. Beth watches Borgov sip his hot chocolate and thinks. She thinks about where she’s supposed to go from here. She has a press tour to do, go play chess with the President but after that, she’s not sure. She would like to see her friends again, hopefully, repair some of the bridges she’d burned. Beth has never been one for long term planning, she’d learnt early on that life can change quickly so what was the point in knowing what you want to do just for it to never happen.

“You know my whole life people have told me that there’s more to life than chess and I should expand my interests, even other chess players. But I’ve always only wanted chess, hell even my soulmark is chess pieces.” She brings her hand up to her chest. “Maybe my soulmate is just chess. Sorry, I’ve never told anyone that.”

Borgov watches her for a second after her confession.

“Maybe your soulmate is just someone who loves chess as much as you. Chess is a two-person game you know.”

Before Beth can respond the waiter from before comes back and tells them the restaurant is closing so they would have to leave. Borgov walks her back to her room and stops her before she enters. He pulls something from his pocket and holds it out to her.

“I couldn’t get the king for you but I did manage to steal this.” He drops the thing into her hand and she realizes it’s a black pawn from the chess set they had been playing on. 

“Thank you.”

“Have a safe trip home, Ms. Harmon, I hope to play you again sometime.”

“You too.”

She closes the door behind her and grins. She studies the pawn in her grasp, it’s a simple thing but she has never been one to underestimate the importance of a well-placed pawn. She slips it carefully into her pocket, she will add it to her necklace when she gets home. Now she strips down to her underwear and climbs into bed. She stares up at the ceiling and imagines a chessboard, the way she had done when she was a child and is almost surprised when it appears. She hasn’t looked for it since she played Borgov, she half expected to no longer be able to do it. She plates through her old games until she falls asleep with a smile on her face.

She wakes up the next morning and gets dressed in the same clothes from the day before. She gets herself a cup of coffee then goes in search of her state department man. 

“I want to go shopping.” He looks at her with raised eyebrows. “I didn’t fly across the world on my friend’s money to not get her anything. Our flight doesn’t leave until this afternoon, you can come with me and watch me the entire time.” The man just sighs.

“Okay.”

Beth first gets a case of Russian vodka for Wexler and Levertov, she doesn’t know them as well as the others but figures they would appreciate it. Next, for the twins, she gets intricately painted matryoshka dolls and an assortment of Russian sweets. For Harry, she finds Luchenko and asks for his autograph of a copy of the game they had played. For Jolene, she finds a beautiful red dress that she had seen in the window of a store and immediately thought of her sister. Finally, she is walking down the street, they will have to leave soon to be able to catch their flight and she still hasn’t found anything for Benny. This gift has to be perfect, a way to also apologize for how she treated him and thank him for calling her across the world for hours even after she’d pushed him away.

She passes a knife store and has a thought. She enters and asks the man at the counter about the different knives they have. When he asks what she needs it for she says protection. He shows her the different secretions and she settles on one with a black leather holster and carved silver grip with leather cord wrapped around it.

Finally done with everything she wanted to buy she finds that her state department man did indeed have her bag and she packs her new gifts away into it. The ride to the airport is silent this time, she figures they don’t want to set her off again. She watches the city race by outside the window, the people out walking and the tall buildings. 

The flight home is long. When the hostess comes and asks if she would like something to drink she gets a coke, thinking of Benny’s face when she declined Cleo’s drink the first time they met. She can’t deny that she wants alcohol but she reminds herself what had happened last time she had said just one drink. 

Her state department man abandons her as soon as they’re back on US soil, telling her that they will be in contact soon about scheduling her press tour along with the chess federation. She has two more flights after that that she sleeps on, she’s not sure what timezone her body believes she’s in anymore but she knows that Jolene will want to stay up and talk when they get home. 

Jolene meets her in the airport, gives her a big hug when she sees her and tells her congratulations. They drive to Beth’s big blue house, listening to music on the radio and laughing. When they get home Beth gets her suitcase out of the car and drags it up to her front door, she steps inside and is surprised to see people in front of her. 

“Surprise!” They yell as she walks in. She drops her suitcase by the door and enters. 

She goes around the room hugging everyone, thanking them for their help, they congratulate her. Wexler, Levertov, Matt, Mike, Harry, even Townes. They’re all here. She doesn’t realize she’s looking for him until she realizes he isn’t here. She feels a sense of disappointment, similar to when he started talking about chess when she was lying in his bed, when she doesn’t see the familiar cowboy hat. 

They stay up late into the night, everyone asking her questions about her games. They even get out a chessboard and play through them. They manage to still include Jolene in most of the conversation. Eventually, Beth goes back to her luggage and gets her gifts for everyone, leaving Benny’s where it is tucked in next to her chessboard. She gives everyone their gifts as a thank you for helping her. She’s not sure she could have done it without them. They explain that it was all Benny’s idea, he got them all together, even contacted Townes to get him to go, figuring he could get a visa the fastest. She wants to ask why he isn’t here if it was all his idea but she doesn’t. 

The boys all pass out in her living room after around midnight and Beth and Jolene go to move her luggage upstairs. 

“Thank you for this. I know you’re not that interested in chess but you sat through it all.” Beth says as they get to her bedroom.

“It wasn’t that bad, I’ve picked up a few things after reading all those stupid chess magazines. And it wasn’t that difficult getting them to come, I think they drove straight from New York.” There’s a beat of silence as they both get ready for bed. “He said he was busy, but if you ask me he’s just a pussy.”

“Who?”

“Your chess cowboy, Benny Watts.”

“He’s not my anything.” Don’t call me anymore. She thought that might have changed after he called her but she wasn’t sure anymore.

“Of course he isn’t, after calling you from across the world and gathering up all your chess friends so you could beat the man you’ve been wanting to beat for literal years.” Jolene rolls her eyes like Beth is being stupid. 

Beth wakes up the next morning in her bed to the smell of coffee. She wraps herself in Alma’s robe and goes downstairs and finds Townes, Harry and Jolene sitting at her kitchen table. They all look up when she walks in.

“Good mornin’ Cracker”

Beth nods at them and pours herself a cup of coffee.

“Is everyone else up yet?” She asks.

“No, we were just about to go get them,” Harry says.

“There should be eggs in the fridge for breakfast if you want.” 

The boys make breakfast and clean her fridge out of anything that might have been left in it. Then everyone leaves, throwing congratulations over their shoulders as they walk out the door. 

She gets a call from the federation telling her about her upcoming schedule. She will leave tomorrow for DC, she will do interviews before playing the President then be flown to New York and going on the late shows and even more interviews. They will pay for everything this time, nice hotels, meals, they are even sending someone to pick her up tomorrow. The conversation takes way too long and she’s exhausted by the end of it. 

She goes to unpack her previous suitcase then repack it for the next couple weeks. As she’s unpacking she finds the knife she had bought. She sets it aside and goes through her outfits, picking out what she’s going to wear for her different interviews and to meet the President. She manages to pack it all fairly quickly, sticking her chess set at the top of her bag. 

After packing she sits down with the knife she bought for Benny. She decides she’s going to send it to him with a letter. She writes out her feelings. Apologizes for how she treated him, thanks him for gathering everybody and calling, tells how she wants them to be friends again, if possible. She knows deep down that she doesn’t want to just be friends with Benny Watts but figures he probably doesn’t return the sentiment and she will settle with having him in her life in any way he will let her. 

She packs it all together and goes to the post office to send it. On the way home, she passes the drugstore. She does still have a prescription for Librium, she could just cross the street and walk up to the counter and ask. Instead, she goes to the grocery store and buys ingredients for dinner and breakfast tomorrow. 

Beth is picked up the next day by a taxi and driven to the airport. Her flight to DC is quite pleasant. It’s a nice day out and she watches the clouds as they pass outside. She gets off the plane and is suddenly surrounded by reporters. She hasn’t experienced this since leaving Russia. 

“Ms. Harmon, is it true you’re here to play the President?”

“Ms. Harmon, how was your time in Russia?”

“Ms. Harmon, what would you say to young women who want to play chess?”

She ignores them and pushes through the crowd, she’s still jet-lagged from her flight from Russia and doesn’t want to deal with them at the moment. She manages to find the representative sent by the federation who already has her luggage. She’s a young woman with blond hair in a severe-looking bun. 

“Ms. Harmon is not taking any questions at the moment, she will be giving interviews over the next few days, you can talk to her then.”

The woman introduces herself as Abigail and leads Beth out of the airport and to a waiting car. On the drive to the hotel, Beth is given an itinerary for the next two weeks. Abigail says she’ll be with Beth the entire time, she will even be travelling with her to New York and any time she needs anything she should just ask. Beth has interviews with most big publications and a full day photoshoot and interview with Chess Review. At the end of the week, she has her game against the President. She will have to go through White House security so they have blocked off the entire day. Then they fly to New York where she will have a couple more newspapers to talk to, including Times then a spot on almost every late-night show. 

The two weeks pass surprisingly quickly. Beth answers questions about Russia and beating Borgov. She remains politely neutral, she rather enjoyed Russia but she can’t tell them that lest she be labelled and communist. She meets with the President for all of five minutes where they shake hands and play a game for the cameras. It’s obvious he knows nothing about chess and Beth quickly pins his king. The rest of her day at the White House is spent sitting around waiting or going through security. They fly to New York and repeat the same questions. Some nights she calls Jolene but most times she is too exhausted by the end of the day and simply falls into bed. 

The one interview that sticks out the most is some late show, they have all blended together in her mind at this point. The host seems to be tired of the same questions she’s been asked for the past two weeks and decides to take it in a different direction. They ask her about her soulmate.

“So what does your soulmate think of all this chess playing.” The host asks, his teeth are too white.

“I wouldn’t know. I haven’t found my soulmate.” The host gives her a pitying look that makes her blood boil.

“Hear that fellas, Beth Harmon is on the market.” He grins and turns to the camera.

“Sorry to break all the hearts out there but my first and true love will always be chess.” She bites back, hating the implication that she’s simply some piece of meat to be sold to the highest bidder.

Beth is still thinking of the conversation later that night when she’s safely back in her hotel room. She hasn’t thought that much about her soulmate in a long time. She strips down so she can study the mark on her chest in the mirror. The black king and white queen stand proudly between her breasts. She thinks back to every chess set she’s ever played with, trying to match them to the mark on her body. And then suddenly it falls into place. She knows what set it is. It’s across the city, probably set up on the tiny kitchen table in a basement apartment. 

“Fuck.”

She rebuttons her blouse and grabs her coat and practically runs out of the hotel. She hails a cab and gasps the address for the townhouse she had spent 5 weeks in only a few months ago. Her hands are shaking and she knows she probably looks insane. She thinks back to what Borgov had told her about soulmates, that it would be someone who loves chess as much as her. She thinks back to every discussion about soulmates she’d ever had with Jolene. She thinks back to every interaction she’d ever had with Benny, even when they fucked she had never seen his bare chest.

All too soon they stop outside the familiar apartment. Beth throws some bills at the driver and rushes down the stairs. She stops outside the door. What is she supposed to do now? Before she can talk herself out of it she knocks on the door, hard and a little frantic. She hears Benny’s voice calling from the other side and then the sound of the lock turning and suddenly she is face to face with him.

“Beth?”

She pushes through the door as she starts answering.

“I don’t know how we missed it before, god we fucking had sex and neither of us noticed. Benny, we lived together for 5 weeks, how could we never notice?” She pushes her coat off her shoulders and starts unbuttoning her shirt.

“Wow, Beth what are you doing? What are you talking about?” Benny closes the door behind her and starts to lead her further into the apartment. “Here why don’t you sit down, I’ll get you some water.” He turns and walks toward the kitchen. 

Beth just continues with the buttons of her shirt and finally gets it off, letting it drop to the ground. Benny has his back turned to her but glances back when he realizes she’s not following him. He stops dead when he sees her.

“Shit.” He crosses the space until he’s back in front of her. “What? How- I don’t understand.” He reaches a hand out like he wants to touch her but doesn’t. He just stands there staring.

“Are you going to just leave me here wondering if I’m right?” She asks, smirking slightly at his reaction.

“What?” She motions to his shirt. “Oh right, yeah.” He lifts the hem of his shirt and pulls it over his head, letting his shirt drop. There, in the middle of his chest, is the matching tattoo. A white queen and black king. She reaches out and touches a finger to the mark, feels a bolt of electricity and Benny seems to relax into her touch. He then carefully presses his fingers to her mark. She feels a warm sensation spreading through her entire body. A sense of rightness, of home. She presses her entire palm into Benny’s chest and he follows suit and the feeling grows until they are just standing there, with their hands pressed to each other’s chests.

Benny reaches down and cups her face, turning it up to face his. He leans down and kisses her. Unlike their brief kisses from their night together before this is sweet and comforting. They pour all their emotions all their love into the kiss. When they eventually break free Beth leans forward and rests her head on his chest, next to her hand, her other hand is on his hip, steadying herself, and she wraps it around his waist. Benny lets the hand not on her chest drape across her shoulders and tangles his hand in her hair. 

“God, how did we miss this?” He whispers.

“I don’t know but I’m glad we have it now.”

“Oh, thanks for the knife by the way.” Beth rolls her eyes at the comment but knows she wouldn’t want to be anywhere else than in the arms of the stupid fucking chess pirate.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to everyone who has taken the time to read and comment on this fic, I love every single one of you!

**Author's Note:**

> I want to do a series that's just a bunch of soulmate aus with benny and beth, if you have any that you would like to see leave them in the comments.


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